LETTERS
Black v. Knight
Sir: In his 13 January Spectator Diary, Charles Moore seemed to consider the publication of the Sunday Telegraph's 7 January sketch of Andrew Knight the primary ethical issue raised by that con- troversy. Mr Knight's long dalliance with the principal competitor of the Telegraph newspapers while still their chief executive, the 'indecent haste' of his defection to that competitor, and the circumstances of his sale of two million Telegraph shares less than a week before he advised me of his intention to retire as chief executive, to a buyer who set great store by his continua- tion at the Telegraph, all matters which have been emphasised in other newspap- ers, might have attracted Mr Moore's other-worldly attention.
This, and Mr Moore's other insight into the subject, in which he quoted from two letters I had written to The Spectator in 1985 and 1986, reveal his perspective on issues involving the Daily Telegraph. Mr Moore referred to my letter to Andrew Knight of 2 January, and concluded that my 'epistolary style' was 'full of sound and fury, not signifying all that much'. The other letters referred, first, to The Specta- tor's then Washington correspondent, Christopher Hitchens's assurance that President Ronald Reagan was a terminal cancer patient who would have to repair so frequently to the lavatory during the up- coming meeting with Mr Gorbachev at Geneva that he would embarrass the entire Western world by his incontinence, and second, to a grossly defamatory piece about me. In the circumstances, the pas- sages Mr Moore quotes don't seem to me unjustifiably strenuous and each case did signify something.
Almost any stylistic critique is fair com- ment, and there is probably some merit in this one, but must Mr Moore react to every subject involving the Daily Telegraph like a bantam rooster who feels his independence is threatened? He would do better to congratulate himself on having sought and found for The Spectator a proprietor who responds so equably to the minor irrita- tions, such as this one, that The Spectator inflicts upon that person who ultimately, and more or less uncomplainingly, pays The Spectator's losses and endures Mr Moore's occasional condescensions.
Conrad Black
9 Robin Grove, London N6
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